The Bulgarian town of Madan has turned its mining traditions into a tourist attraction thanks to a new museum. Exactly 40 years after the cessation of production in the local mine, it has awakened to a new life by recalling the recent past in a museum exhibition. Everyone can now visit the Mining Museum opened at the end of 2022 in the town in the Rhodopes to learn more about the life of miners, marked by hard work and the risk of accidents. It is not by chance that the old mine in the town was named "Spoluka" (Luck). At the entrance, tourists are provided with the mandatory safety helmet before entering the underworld. There, they see figures of miners busy with various activities.

"The mine exhibition is 140 meters long,” the head of the project, Biser Kurdzhiev, has told the BNR. “It has a rail track and all the equipment, including the compressors, generators and tools, still work. People are interested to know about the life of miners and their work. One can see the timber and concrete supports of the shaft and how it was constructed. It is all functional.”

The beautiful crystals found hundreds of meters underground in the region of Madan can be seen in the Crystal Hall, created back in 1984.  Tourists are greatly impressed by the design of hall and the way the crystals are arranged:

"There are nearly 600 exhibits in our hall,” curator Asya Milanova says. “All of them are different. There are no identical crystals - these are the creations of nature, which has worked for millions of years and they are truly unique. There are few mines like this one, where we can see galena and sphalerite with its unique crystal lattices. Our crystals 'want' to be in their natural environment. They are not exposed to sudden temperature changes or solar light because there is presence of manganese in some crystals and if they are exposed to sunlight, they could fade or crack. Among the interesting exhibits one can see semi-precious cleiophane. We have yellow, green and brown samples. When we leave the cleiophane in sunlight, it charges and when we bring it back into the darkness, it continues to glow."

In addition to the newly-opened underground museum and the Crystal Hall, guests of Madan can also visit the nearby "Sharenka" cave. In it, they can get to know the way in which the Thracians mined ore in this part of the Rhodopes as early as the Bronze Age /16-12 BC/.

• The Rhodopes – between mining and tourism

The necessary infrastructure for visitors of "Sharenka" Cave has recently been repaired. According to the mayor of Madan, Fahri Molaisenov, the idea of the municipality is to attract a high number of tourists with the newly opened tourist sites. For this purpose, new eco-trails will also be created in the area.

See also:

• Museum of Mining in Pernik turns coal mining into tourist attraction

Compiled by: Veneta Nikolova based on an article by Radostina Chernokova, BNR "Horizont"

 English: Al. Markov

Photos: Municipality of Madan